b-random9's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gyro Gear Tournament+]

No idea what I'm meant to be doing besides just ramming the characters together, seems the winner is always determined by however scores the highest at the start.

I way able to get bouncing on the opponents head with the second character who felt significantly better to control, which felt like I was doing something right but the bar says otherwise.

rotcivsette responds:

Sorry if it wasn't clear! You have to press a button to attack the opponent to prevent damage. Also avoid touching their attack ring. Jumping on their heads is effective, but takes time. Unless you're up against Centin, he cancels jumping attacks with his helmet.

[Advent NEON DEMO [Web Version]]

Feels nice enough even if the controls are a bit hard to get used to on keyboard regardless of how you map it.

Problem is, I can't for the life of me figure out how to start the first level. I'm over the open door, I've pressed up, down, left, right, jump, attack, super attack, dash, escape, enter and nothings happened. I would assume down given the arrow above the door but I just duck.

CryoGX responds:

I'm sorry you're experiencing this! That's definitely weird.

If the door is open, then pressing "up" (without moving) is supposed to start the level. I have never seen or heard someone mention this specifically *not* working before, so please use the feedback form (https://forms.gle/Ag5KMrfHHqRRsaSM6) to describe what's happened in more detail if you can spare the time.

If for some reason you've clicked outside of the game window nothing will respond at all until you click back inside it.

[Flavouride]

It's clear a lot of work was put into giving this game a sense of style, kind of feels like a GBA game. It's really quite impressive how polished it is.

I do think there may be an issue at the conceptual level though. The game feels very at odds at itself on what it wants to be. Like it's got this open map concept where you start again if you die but the player mechanics feel more in line of with something like Celeste where you die instantly but only get back a short amount.
Like, it feels like the game's not sure what it's testing me on. I died in cheese land after getting the key and came close to quitting, the only thing being tested with the shooty enemies is my ability to wait for an opportunity to attack which isn't really related to the core mechanic. Chocolate land does this better by having to hit a dude up through the stream.

The bosses were the more interesting part of the game for sure. Chocolate boss felt a bit lacking though, like all was being tested was the ability to jump over the boss then stand in the right place, had it tested the prementioned mechanic I think it would have been on par with the rest.

In the end I had to give up on cheese land, there was no way I was redoing the entire stage because I died to the boss.

Overall I'm guessing the goal was just to create a polished feeling platformer and it does that. I think the biggest flaw is just not knowing how to create challenge. Like the levels almost feel like padding between the bosses.

I think if you really wanted to commit to open levels, making it feel more like a world with a few characters in it and perhaps being less formulaic would help elevate the feel the game goes for to the next level.

Oh also this couldn't bother me less but I figure I should say that medals don't seem to unlock for me.

HealliesGames responds:

In general yes, I think it could use a better level design as you say and a more creative use of the mechanics.
Not pretty sure about checkpoints, since the levels are quite small and relatively simple.

I see you unlocked the medals: it can happen that you may reload the page.

Thank you for a detailed feedback!

[Becloudead - Christmas Special]

Really can't get into this game due to the combat system. It's weird that it's so heavily rhythm based yet has no real audio feedback regarding if you pull of a combo or not, there's a good reason most rhythm game's are music games, without the feedback it just feels off. It's a rhythm game without a sense of rhythm.

On top of that I don't really get the point of the combo system. Like, I seem to be able to swing faster just by mashing the button.

To make things worse, I get sent back to the start when I die, I'm trying to a grasp on the combat system, why am I being forced to do the basic platforming again? Gave up after getting by the zombies only to die to the wolf twice.

Not sure why the roll is down + x. Perhaps x gets used for something else as I didn't get far but it seems like there's no reason it couldn't just be down or x.

Credit where it's due on the atmosphere, nice to see a game have a foreground layer with faster parallax than the main, works well with the tree.

Overall though, wasn't much incentive to try and grasp the game's mechanics.

HeadbanGames responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

Like we mention in the demo and in the description, these specials are built on an early alpha build of the game.

There is a lot more we are planning, we're aiming for a 2020 release and we'll be polishing it regularly throughout the development.

Adding sound cues to the combos is a nice idea, I'll look into that.

You can swing fast if you choose to, but you will only alternate between hits 1 and 2.
Hit #3 does more damage and has special attribute with some weapons, the knife for example cuts off zombies arms (zombie minus one arm does 25% less damage, 50% if you cut both)
Hit #4 is even stronger than hit #3 and with the knife it will take off zombies head (reduce 50% damage).
Also hits 3 and 4 pushes enemies back further.

Currently there are only two weapons, but we have more planned and you could eventually build your own combos mixing different weapons.

There are 2 checkpoints in each special, each special takes about 10 minutes to beat. I think that's fair enough.

X without down is used for the dashing ability later on.
Rolling can't be just down, because that is used for crouching, low attacks and to drop down to a ledge or a ladder (with jump).

[Karoshi Portal]

No idea why this is so highly rated, it's unfocused, unpolished and buggy,

I fairly consistently managed to spawn 3 portals. Level 3 feels more like a bug than a feature.

The art and lack of animation is just dull.

Plenty of levels like level 4 felt like padding, and of the levels that felt like actual levels, all of them were easy exercises in following a linear path.

All the excess elements in levels rob the feeling of everything coming together.

The continuous music gets obnoxious.

I usually try to be nice even to games that are fairly awful and find something of value the dev clearly did well, but this just feels like a complete lack of effort, shame when the core concept was promising.

orange08 responds:

It's highly rated because so many people like it.

[Forgecore]

Nice balance of story and gameplay. I like how each area has it's own idea.

Also I imagine the core mechanic is quite good at catering to a lot of skill levels since you control how fast you go.

My biggest complaint might be difficulty. The first chapter goes on way too long for an introduction, I honestly thought I'd broke it. Then the difficulty ramps up insanely quickly. I just barely got by on the blizzard climb after trying again and again to the point where I feel like I missed something, and having to start from the very bottom every time grew tedious.

I do like that the blizzard changed as you went though. The story does feel a bit too formulaic and this was a nice exception. And whilst I think it was far too difficult, I do think being tougher than the rest suited the game pacing wise.

Honestly though, I gave up on the boss. A lot of the challenges just had me confused as to what I was doing wrong, like at first I though the guys who come and freeze you you'd have to counter by getting super hot rather than flamethrowering them, and I imagine someone could get hung up there. And the boss seemed like it was going to be the worst, weather of not I get hit just feels more random than anything. I'm sure there is a reliable way to dodge him, but figuring that out would take patience the game has already drained from me.

morazor responds:

First of all, thanks for all the kind words!
I'm sorry to hear that it became frustrating tho. Those two specific sections can surely get frustrating because the "win or die" mechanics, while the other levels can be approached in different ways (slow and safe or fast and risky).
Choosing how hard the game has to be was difficult, in the end I've decided to keep the game more challenging but to split it in short sections that could be done in a minute or two tops.

[[BTNverse] Universal Thief]

I slammed the intern

adriendittrick responds:

poor intern didn't do nothin'

[Only One Tower]

It's a little janky. Like it's quite hard to tell enemy hp when it's so small and everything blends together, and the way it suddenly cuts to the ending.

That said, this was really good. Once the cannon guy got introduced and enemies started to cut lanes, it became brilliant. Having the boss fire a projectile at the tower was also a really interesting twist. The game became very tense at the end.

With that said, I do have some nitpicks. Again, the sudden cut at the end felt like a letdown, going from a tense environment to just suddenly a "you win" screen.

Another thing was it's quite hard to understand some stuff, I still have no idea how the bomb tower works, other than that I think you're meant to use it in small bursts. Then some enemies I wasn't really sure why I wasn't damaging them, like if I were doing something wrong or if the tower type simply didn't damage them. The game could do a lot to better convey this sort of thing.

Just noticed now the description "Bomb- Barely damages enemies, however can one hit kill some. Big radius." I find that really intuitive, since u'know, you'd expect a bomb to do a lot of damage.

Lastly, the continuous nature of the game was kinda exhausting. I'm sure that's something you want to a degree, but I think dividing it slightly would help the experience. If there are pauses already, have them feel like breaks rather than the game just being easy, even just some small indicator.

Again though, overall, great.

Stopsignal responds:

YES thanks, in depth reviews are always awesome and really helpful.
The sudden cut really sucks, i agree. In the downloaded version the screen starts to shake quite a bunch and it makes a bit more sense (though i think it should have a bit more, maybe make the units run away or something) but i had to cut the shaking because of HTML5 issues. Couldn't get it working again!

The bomb tower is also bugged and i have no idea why, as i checked the code. It suddenly stops attacking.
I absolutely should make some kind of effect to convey how armored enemies take no damage from bombs. It was even worse in the jam version- it slowed enemies and showed the hp bar, yet didn't damage them, which absolutely confused players. That was a learning experience!

It is really exhausting, specially the latter difficulties. I do actually like this, however! I mean, it is a 10 minute affair, a one and done thing, so i think it's fine.
Thanks a lot for the critique! this is really helpful. I want to give another go at this some day (i love tower defenses) and this helps a lot :)

[Cryomancer]

First off, very nice style. The color scheme is nice and I like the bounciness of the character.

As interesting as the core mechanic could be, I'm not a fan of how it's executed.

For starters, taking til level 5 to introduce it is unnecessary.

More importantly though, most of the challenge of the levels comes from tight precision and wresting with the physics rather than say puzzles. It's not particularly mentally challenging but slowly positioning boxes isn't very fun either, so you get neither the joy of solving a difficult situation you get in puzzles nor that sense of execution and flow a good platformer gives.

Sry but I really couldn't find the appeal in this one at all.

KanartStudio responds:

In the firsts levels, I just made sure to introduce one mechanic at a time, since they are small levels, I don't think this is a problem.

And yeah the game is all about precision, I made it this way, the description even says it's a “precision-platforming game” it's all about placing the blocks correctly in the shortest amount of time possible, I think you're expecting something else, and I don't blame you
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I deleted the puzzle tag so people don't get confused :)

[Quarantine]

"We live in a society"

The dialogue feels quite disconnected from the choices. After reading several paragraphs of something contemplative, I'm asked to make mundane choices for a character who I don't even know. The text is thrown at the player so bluntly without regard for the game.
And half the text just feels like resentful whining. Not to say such a character couldn't be put under a spotlight, but it's the only perspective we're given, as if this characters opinions hold some kind of authority as they whine about their teacher or businessmen.

GabeMalk responds:

I don't see the problem with making mundane choices after contemplation, in the real world you still have to wash the dishes after finding the meaning of life.
About authority, I don't know if you've played the game till the end, but we try to explore this author x spectator contradiction that arises in a game where the player makes choices, we try to delude the author's authority with the choices + the end dialogue, but it's a matter of interpretation after all.
I can understand your criticism, and we'll surely take it in consideration, even if we disagree in some aspects.
The only part I don't quite understand is "the text is thrown at the player so bluntly without regard for the game". Not sure what you expected from a narrative game such as this where the text IS the game in many ways.
Anyway, thanks for your opinion!